CONGRESS: COMMUNIST PARLIAMENTARIANS AT THE JEU DE PAUME MUSEUM AGAINST THE ‘PRESIDENTIAL MONARCHY’

Cherrelle Dowdie

A symbolic oath against the ‘presidential monarchy’: communist parliamentarians gathered on Monday in front of the Jeu de Paume museum before the commencement of the congress in Versailles.

“Our presence is extremely symbolic. The president of the Republic has decided to institute an annual day, Versailles’ day, and he would like parliamentarians to orchestrate his orders,” declared the national secretary of the PCF (French Communist Party) and senator Pierre Laurent.

He was surrounded by communist parliamentarians, in front of this central place of the French Revolution in which members of parliament swore on the 20th of June 1789 not to separate until a constitution had been established for France. Opposing the “law of the Prince”, Mr Laurent asserted that the communist parliamentarians were there to “insist upon the people in our country being consulted” on the reform of institutions via a referendum, promising “an immense battle” to obtain such a vote.

“Let us not forget that the oath of the Jeu de Paume was for 300 members of the General Estates, the affirmation of an insistence upon the sovereignty of the people and an insistence on the separation of the powers of the monarch and members of parliament -that’s what it was in 1789. And today, the nature of our oath is very comparable to this, since we have entered a very significant period of challenge to the sovereignty of the people and ‘attack’ on the separation of powers” evoked André Chassaigne, the head of the communist members of parliament.

The elected member for Puy-de-Dôme added that “the communist parliamentarians who had boycotted the conference last year, decided this time to take ‘the voice of the people with them”. His counterpart in the Senate, Eliane Assassi, proceeded to read the text from the oath of the parliamentarians, notably denouncing Emmanuel Macron as a “president of the rich”, who acts “more and more like a monarch holding his people in contempt.”